The Canadian MS Working Group has issued recommendations on optimizing treatment of patients with relapsing-remitting MS (Freedman et al. Can J Neurol Sci 2013;40:307-323). The publication updates recommendations published in 2004 (Freedman et al. Can J Neurol Sci 2004;31:157-168). See below for free download information. Read More
A U.S. study reports that Parkinson’s disease dementia often goes unrecognized in the nursing home setting (Hoegh et al. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2013; 2013;21:529-535).
An analysis has been conducted to determine the minimum clinically important difference in the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) during antipsychotic treatment based on data from the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) study (Hermes et al. J Clin Psychiatry 2012;73:526-532). Data were available for 1,442 patients to link PANSS scores and clinician/patient ratings on the Clinical Global Impressions (CGI) scale.
Report from the European Neurological Society (ENS) annual meeting
Barcelona, Spain, June 8-11, 2013
Parkinson’s disease
CIS/Multiple sclerosis
Epilepsy
Restless legs syndrome
Comment by Dr. Daniel Selchen, Toronto, Canada
Parkinson’s disease: Subthalamic deep-brain stimulation (DBS) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and is associated with a low rate of short-term mortality. Surgical complications, such as hemorrhage, hardware-related adverse events and inability to complete the procedure, occur in about 5% of patients (Vergani et al. World Neurosurg 2010;73:338-344).
Short-term complications may include intracranial hemorrhage, infection and pulmonary embolism (Voges et al. Mov Disord 2007;22:1486-1489). Cases series have reported all-cause mortality of 9-10% at 3-5 years post-surgery (Toft et al. Mov Disord 2011;26:1931-1934; Schupbach et al. Mov Disord 2007;22:257-261).